Does the drinking age need to be changed?

Debate is raging over the drinking age in Canada and the U.S.

Photograph by: DMITRY KOSTYUKOV
, AFP/Getty Images

Three very distinct news streams collided to get me thinking about young men and alcohol consumption. One is the geopolitical drama that is playing out in Russia and Ukraine, both which rank in the top five worldwide for consumption of alcohol, according to the World Health Organization. The second, much closer to home, is a study from the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) on drinking ages in Canada. The third is the spate of “rape culture” and other alcohol-related incidents at University campuses across our country.

Full disclosure: I grew up in New York City when the drinking age was 18. Of course people were also being drafted at that age into the U.S. military and sent to Vietnam, so there was a certain logic in treating 18 as the official entry into adulthood.

Like the New York of my youth, the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) is 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Québec, and 19 in the rest of Canada. The year in which a young person “turns legal” can be a perilous one.

The UNBC study reports a significant spike in deaths of young males from all causes (primarily injuries) as well as from motor vehicle accidents, in the year immediately after reaching legal drinking age. Increases were also found among females, but they were not statistically significant.

The researchers, led by psychologist Russell Callaghan, even made a calculation of the likely effect of changing the drinking age, suggesting that ”raising the drinking age to 19 years of age in Alberta, Manitoba, and Québec would prevent seven deaths of 18-year-old men each year.” If a uniform age of 21 prevailed across the country, “this would prevent 32 annual deaths of male youth 18 to 20 years of age.”

It’s worth noting that in 1984 the U.S. Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which held back highway funding from any state that allowed people under 21 to purchase or publicly possess alcohol, while not outlawing consumption per se. All 50 states eventually complied, though some allow exceptions such as drinking at home or in connection with religious ceremonies. The rest of the world, with the exception of Japan (20), Iceland (20) and South Korea (19) seems to think 18 is just fine for a drinking age.

Since we’d all like to save young lives, and avoid problems such as alcohol-fuelled rapes and other offences on college campuses, there would seem to be some wisdom in raising the MLDA. But just a minute, says a coalition of U.S. college and university presidents and chancellors.

Through something called the Amethyst Initiative, 136 of them have signed what is basically an online petition to reconsider the U.S. drinking age. While many are from small colleges, there are some heavy hitters like the presidents of Duke and Dartmouth.

Their argument that “twenty-one is not working” is supported by evidence of “clandestine binge-drinking” and students making “ethical compromises that erode respect for the law” by using Fake IDs. They also pooh-poohed the mandatory alcohol education programs on college campuses, admitting that they are really ineffective.

As might be expected, students are generally in support of what these presidents are asking for. Harvard undergraduate Sam N. Adams wrote in that school’s student newspaper that “Harvard has a drinking problem” and urged the institution’s president to sign on to the Amethyst Initiative.

“Dangerous drinking occurs among underclassmen who take too many shots of cheap vodka at a pre-game because they don’t know whether they’ll encounter any more booze at their next destination,” Adams wrote. He also notes that “Many kids binge drink because it’s new and it’s rebellious” and that eliminating the illicit aspect would actually serve to curb drinking. Adams concludes that “Dangerous drinking occurs not because there are too many opportunities for drinking, but because there are too few.”

Opposition to the Amethyst Initiative came swiftly from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, whose president accused the college officials of “not doing their homework”. Others suggested they just wanted to dump the teen drinking problem onto high school principals. However one thoughtful student wrote that it is probably better to learn about alcohol in high school, where there are more rules, than in college. The Governors Highway Safety Association and even the National Transportation Safety Board also weighed in against any lowering of the drinking age in the U.S.

Backers of the Amethyst Initiative say they are not necessarily arguing for a lower age, but instead for some serious discussion and meaningful education about alcohol. UNBC’s Callaghan would probably agree at least with that. One of the major recommendations of his study is that there be special attention and education given to young people, especially males, as they make the transition across the minimum legal drinking age, whatever it may be.

As for Ukraine, where the official drinking age is 18, one report of a pro-Russian rally included the phrase “the smell of alcohol hung in the air” which is probably no surprise to anyone. What was unusual is that, for a while, went you went to the Wikipedia page listing minimum drinking ages around the world, some prankster had changed Ukraine’s from 18 to “Drinking prohibited while the Russians are making a mockery of international law.” They even provided a reference for that in a footnote. There’s no word about whether the poster had been drinking.

Dr. Tom Keenan is an award winning journalist, public speaker, professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, and author of the new book, Technocreep.

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